Fae's Path to Konoha
by Racke
Summary: Six-year-old Harry walks through a mirror, and Sakura becomes a big sister. But the Boy-Who-Lived still has a role to play.
1. Chapter 1

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Fae's Path to Konoha – Chapter 1

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Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

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Harry stared into the mirror.

It was an ordinary mirror. It was the same kind of mirror that hung over most every bathroom-sink in the country, with the only real difference to most being that this particular mirror belonged to his relatives.

Considering how proud his relatives were of their status as 'normal' citizens, it was entirely possible that it was the single most ordinary mirror there'd ever been.

The man behind the glass continued to regard him with those near-glowing green eyes, silently patient in a way that seemed about as human as the phases of the moon. Cold and unreadable, but no crueler than summer rain.

For an ordinary mirror to not show any kind of reflection? For it to instead show a man with eyes so brilliantly green that they couldn't be real?

Harry hadn't exactly heard children whisper about their Good Neighbors, but he'd certainly heard Vernon grumble once or twice about overly superstitious folk, and not even the Dursleys clear disapproval of unnatural things could've entirely blocked fairytales from the daycare.

Fae were... probably not the kind of creatures you wanted to have poking their heads out of your bathroom-mirrors, regardless of whether you – on sheer principle alone – disapproved of such unnatural things or not.

Then again... there had to be a reason for it, right?

Why this mirror? Why when Harry looked into it? Why-... Why did the faceless man in the mirror look so much like himself?

But the mirror was a mirror, and no matter how many questions Harry tried to ask, the man inside of it remained silent, patient, waiting.

Harry was six years old, and staring into those glowing green eyes on an older face impossibly distorted by broken glass that otherwise looked so much like his own, he did something very foolish.

He reached out, and where there should've been a mirror's glass, from the other side, a larger hand took his hand in turn.

Climbing on top of the bathroom sink was surprisingly easy with the man's help.

Behind the mirror, _the world_ -...

-... Harry blinked blearily up at the foreign-looking man shaking him awake.

"Hey kid, you shouldn't be sleeping in the middle of the street, you know." The man glanced around, giving Harry a few moments to take in a giant stone wall with an equally gigantic gate attached to it. "What's your name?"

"Harry." Harry blinked, refusing to speak it in its entirety for a reason he couldn't quite remember, confused about why his fingers hurt like he'd been out in the snow. _Confused about why he couldn't see his breath, about why there was so much green, about the man's honestly worried expression so completely lacking any malice_ -...

The man frowned slightly, a brief flash of worry crossing his face before being replaced with a somewhat-forced smile. "Nice to meet you Harry. Do you know where you are?"

"... Away." Harry answered, the strangest feeling of desperate relief in his heart, as if he'd been chased by Dudley for days and days only to finally lose him around a corner.

"I see." The smile grew a bit more strained. "Well, this place is called 'Konoha', Harry. And I'm sure you're hungry, right?"

Harry's stomach chose that moment to make a desperate gurgling sound, the kind of desperate one might expect from a thirsty man crawling through the sandy dunes of the desert.

The smile got a bit more truthful as Harry blushed. "Happy to hear it. I know a restaurant with the tastiest food."

And for the second time, Harry _followed a man through_ -... Konoha was very pretty, and there were people everywhere. Even if the _expressions on the faces on the mountain reminded_ -... Even if the faces carved into the mountain were a bit too stern-looking for his comfort.

XXX

Six years old, with bright green eyes and a face on the exotic side. He was definitely going to be a heart-breaker growing up.

The boy had no memory of how he'd ended up outside of Konoha's gates, though he did mention that his relatives – whose names he refused to speak – were civilians. They'd also apparently not been the kind of people who might approve of a child becoming a ninja, and... Hari definitely had enough chakra to become a good one if he was given the chance to grow.

Which might explain why his relatives had been ever-so unpleasant towards him. After all, it wasn't unheard of for ninja to dally in places – and with _people_ – they really shouldn't. Young Hari being the bastard son of some no-name shinobi who'd caught sight of a pretty face? More likely than the Hokage was entirely happy to admit.

He liked to think that his own ninja would be above such things, but with the way that Hari refused to name his hometown? The way he seemed to reflexively refuse all hints of getting more names from him than 'Hari'? It was likely that the town was somewhere within Fire Country's borders, and for all that the ninja-world might've been peaceful enough for such a dalliance have been a foreign ninja, he was still old enough that he would've been conceived barely a few years into peacetime, making it far more likely that Hari's birth-father had been a Konoha-nin.

It was entirely possible that that was pointless conjuncture, and the Hokage had every intention of at least going as far as looking 'underneath the underneath' in regards to the boy's heritage. He wasn't too young to be a spy – Danzo and his methods could attest to that – but a sleeper-agent? Not very likely. And he wouldn't be the first spy to break ties with whomever sent him over the bonds he'd made within Konohagakure, should it come to that.

All the Hokage really needed to do was to treat Hari as if there was nothing beyond the surface of a young runaway wanting to become a ninja. The rest would sort itself out in due time.

Still, they didn't exactly have a lot of empty apartments to choose from, and Hiruzen would eat his own Hat before risking to expose Naruto to whatever unknown influences the boy could be carrying with him. Bonds or no.

So, where in the world could he put this green-eyed foreigner-looking child?

Foster-care? With whom? None of the big clans would want him. Regardless of allegiances, he wouldn't be _their clan_ , meaning that they'd refuse to teach him their techniques and traditions, and at that point it would be kinder to just not even try.

One of the smaller clans maybe? It'd have to be one of the ones whose clan-techniques were already on the verge of dying out, otherwise it'd be the same issue as with the big clans. And a lot of the ones who was on the verge of that... had already taken steps to prevent their techniques from vanishing into obscurity.

The few that hadn't? Well... there was Hatake Kakashi. Small clan, very low chance of future children, and extremely talented shinobi. Also a mental breakdown waiting to happen, and the jounin who was most likely to end up teaching the Jinchuuriki of Konoha.

The rest were similarly bad options, even if their reasons for it were quite varied.

Still, foster-care _would_ solve an awful lot of problems, without risking Danzo trying to stick his fingers into things and ruining the boy's chances of joining Konoha's forces voluntarily. Young spies, Danzo could create. Loyal spies? With his methods, he'd have better luck lassoing the moon.

So... there was what? The civilian clans? Hiruzen didn't actually have a lot of authority over those. It came with merchants being so... interchangeable. One merchant more or less didn't matter for as long as Konoha made sure that none of them managed to get a monopoly on anything _important_. And that was a very good way of making sure that Konoha's enemies couldn't completely ruin their supply-lines with a few strategic assassinations.

Maybe if he could make a convincing argument for the child being one of their own? Not that young Hari really looked much like anyone he could think of-... Actually, despite his foreign-looks, his eyes were-... Those green eyes of his looked a bit like a Haruno's, if you squinted.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Hiruzen sent out a missive to call the Head of the Haruno family to his office.

He didn't really need to convince the man that Hari was theirs, he just needed to present the possibility that he _might_ be theirs. And then hopefully a few worried faces about the boy's future would do the rest.

Hiruzen was pretty sure that they'd named their pink-haired daughter 'Sakura'. Original, they weren't. And unoriginal people had a wonderful tendency to simply go along with whatever a person in authority might suggest. Especially when the unoriginal people in question were civilians who already had a daughter to dote on.

Civilian parents always ended up getting all mushy about children ending up on the street, and that _was_ technically an option here.

XXX

Haruno Hari was an easy name to remember, even if it _wasn't his True_ -... even if Harry still remembered another one. It was _True enough_ -... He'd been officially adopted by the Haruno-family, and despite what the Dursleys had told him, it was surprisingly okay.

At this point he was pretty sure that the Dursleys had been playing up the horrors of not-Dursley-families in order to keep Harry from running away and getting them into trouble when people started to wonder what was going on in their home.

Not to say that there weren't worse places than with the Dursleys, _like the howling winter-winds_ -... Admittedly, Harry had heard some bad stuff about Konoha's orphanages from some of the other kids in his class, but with something like two-dozen kids all crammed into a house built for like half-a-dozen people in total? It wasn't exactly surprising.

There were a lot of orphans in Konoha. Not so much because of the war, because there hadn't been a war since pretty much before Harry's generation had been born. But because of the Kyuubi. A lot of the older children at least had lost their parents to the demon that the Yondaime Hokage had destroyed with his suicide-technique.

The younger children though? That was just how the world worked. Shinobi didn't live long lives, and – outside of the bigger clans – orphans ended up in orphanages. Unless they were old enough to find an apartment of their own, or were just independent enough to demand one and went on to prove that they wouldn't kill themselves within a month. Those orphans were allowed to do as they pleased, even if they couldn't afford much.

At least two boys from Sakura-nee's class lived on their own. And Hari wasn't alone in his own class to live with distant, or not-so-distant, relatives.

For once in his life, there didn't seem to be much of anything at all strange about being an orphan that lived with their relatives. And his relatives were nice people.

Hari liked Konoha.

XXX

Sakura... wasn't entirely sure how she'd ended up becoming a big sister.

One moment she'd been a single-child, no matter how often her parents commented that she seemed to be attached to the hip with Ino. The next moment, there'd been Hari.

He was a lot older than suddenly-existing little brothers usually were, and his face had a strange shape to it, but the way he looked at her-...

Sakura had never really been admired before.

The teachers at the Academy would praise her, her parents would look at her with pride, Ino's dad would look at her with fondness, and Ino was always happy to see her. But admiration? She was just a clever girl with a big forehead.

And even so, whenever she explained something to her new little brother who didn't ever seem to know anything at all about Konoha, he looked so amazed by her.

It was... nice.

Even if Ino joked that Sakura was growing mad with power, whenever she tried a little harder than usual to show off in front of her little brother. It wasn't like Ino didn't do it too. Though Sakura kind of got the feeling that Ino mostly only did it whenever Sakura paid attention to someone who wasn't her.

Her best friend could be pretty vain like that.

Not that Sakura minded. Ino was really cool.

XXX

The problem with being in the class a year below Sakura-nee, was that Hari had never really figured out how to make friend with people. Back in Little Whinging, there'd been Dudley scaring off anyone who might be nice to him, and then there hadn't been... anything.

Hari understood the theory behind making friends. You were supposed to talk to people, and then after you'd talked to them enough, they'd be your friend. He was pretty sure that that was how it worked.

Unfortunately, Hari had never really talked to anyone. Excepting teachers who scolded him, his relatives who yelled at him, and Dudley who taunted him. The Haruno-family was very different, but even then... they were usually busy with other things, for all that they smiled warmly at him. Sakura-nee also wasn't-... She was very smart and stuff, but whenever she wasn't talking with Ino-senpai, she was reading books.

Hari didn't terribly mind books, but he didn't really want to spend his free time with his nose buried in them. He could do enough of that during classes. And homework. Ugh, homework.

So whilst it was nice that Sakura-nee was a year ahead of him and really smart, so she could help him along whenever he didn't understand something, Hari didn't-... Hari didn't have any friends in his class.

He wasn't super-talented at anything, so nobody fawned after him to beg study-sessions from him. Thanks to Sakura-nee, he wasn't behind at anything either, so the teachers didn't pressure any of the more talented kids to help him out. He was just... average.

In some ways, it was comforting, being able to sort of sink into the crowd and not be bothered by anyone. In other ways, it was lonely.

It was a strange feeling. Hari had spent _so much time_ -... spent his time in Little Whinging desperately trying to survive. He hadn't had time to think about stuff like if he had friends or not, when he'd been so busy trying not _to have his throat cut out_ -... to be beat up by Dudley and his newly-formed gang.

Hari didn't like it. But then... there wasn't much he could do about it.

And at least he could hang out with Shikamaru-senpai and Chouji-senpai sometimes, when Sakura-nee and Ino-senpai ditched them to talk about girl-things.

Life was... good.

XXX

Sasuke was really cool. And pretty.

Sakura frowned up at the ceiling of her bedroom. On the one hand, she was happy that Ino agreed with her. On the other hand... it... kind of made her upset?

A part of her wanted to just do the whole thing like mom would've done it. All out, no holds barred, anything is fair in love and war. Sasuke couldn't marry both of them, so obviously Sakura needed to win over Ino. But Ino was her best friend, and she-...

If she and Ino fought over Sasuke, they wouldn't be friends anymore. Friends didn't fight like that. They bickered and argued and competed, but they didn't-... not like _that_.

So the part of her that wanted to go all out to get Sasuke to herself? That part was in conflict with the part that said that she didn't really want to lose her only friend.

She'd seen what it was like for Hari, drifting around alone, hesitantly failing to reach out to his own classmates every time. No Ino of his own to push him into new friendships, even if he didn't have Sakura's overly large forehead to make him a target for bullies.

That's what life would be like without Ino. Books, homework, a few people she could talk to about unimportant stuff, and training to not slip behind in class.

Sakura didn't want that. Even if having Sasuke would more than make up for the lack of Ino.

She shouldn't fool herself though. Love could take a lot of time. Mom said as much. And Sakura didn't want to be stuck like that for however long it took, with neither Ino nor Sasuke around.

It was a frustrating kind of feeling.

Was this what mom had meant when she'd said that love was painful? It'd certainly explain all of that despairing moaning people in stories tended to do.

Blergh. Life sucked.

XXX

Hari didn't have much of an opinion on Uchiha Sasuke.

He was talented and worked hard, he wasn't ugly, he tended to glare at most everything around him, and he was an orphan. That was the full extent of Hari's opinion on Uchiha Sasuke.

What he _did_ have an opinion on was his older sister's crush on Uchiha Sasuke. Mainly in the sense that he'd reluctantly learnt from experience that the only way to keep her from talking about anything except Uchiha Sasuke – and how amazing he was, for one reason or another – was to not give her any chance to talk about anything other than directly asked questions from Hari's side of things.

Sakura-nee was happy to help him out with homework, and definitely enjoyed learning new things. The problem was that she tended to get distracted from the subject-matter if Hari didn't poke her with relevant questions. Which had been fine when she'd talked about Ino being cool and knowing lots of people, but nowhere near as fine when she wouldn't stop gushing about Sasuke having set a new personal record in class for something.

Hari liked Ino, and definitely agreed that she was kind of cool. Hari was about as fond of Uchiha Sasuke as he was of the visual texture of brick walls.

Basically, he didn't give a rat's arse about it.

Also, there was a big difference between Sakura talking about her best friend, and Sakura gushing about her crush. And Hari kept getting this urge to roll his eyes about it, because _how could she not see_ -... because surely Uchiha Sasuke wasn't worth gushing over?

Not that Hari supposed he was an expert on things like that. It wasn't like he even had any friends of his own to start with.

That was just life.

XXX

Had Uzumaki Naruto been any other kind of person than he was, Hari would've probably been perfectly happy to hang out with him, regardless of what the adults might have to say about it.

Harry Potter had always been an outcast, and Haruno Hari wasn't exactly popular enough to be all that picky about his friends.

Unfortunately, Uzumaki Naruto was loud and brash and far too determined to be obnoxious in order to not be ignored. To the point where Hari could barely stand being in the same room as him for longer than a handful of minutes before he started to seriously consider cutting classes, purely to get away from him.

And that wasn't even counting the way he kept following Sakura-nee around like some weird stalker-puppy, asking her on dates time and again no matter how bluntly she turned him down.

At this point, Hari _actively disliked_ Uzumaki Naruto. Which was far more feeling than he put into continuing to ignore as much about Uchiha Sasuke as he could get away with.

It was difficult to be fond of the older boy when Sakura-nee kept trying to force-feed him every single tiny little habit that she'd spotted whilst she – much like Naruto did to her – stalked him all around the Village.

If Hari could've convinced his older sister to perhaps not get involved with the bristly orphan of the Uchiha clan, he would've done so in a heartbeat. But even Ino-senpai – who was otherwise always so sensible – refused to be dissuaded.

So Hari had long since resigned himself to having to listen to Sakura-nee gushing about her crush, even if he didn't really understand why girls were interested in that sort of thing.

As for Uzumaki Naruto, Hari made no attempts to hide his feelings about the blond continuously asking his older sister out on dates, when she'd clearly already rejected him.

If he would shut up about it and get on with his life, fine. Whatever. As long as Hari didn't have to listen to him being obnoxious, he was fine with it. But he was being obnoxious and _harassing Hari's older sister_.

Perhaps it was just that he reminded Hari a _bit too much of the_ -... Perhaps he was overreacting or something. For all that nobody liked Uzumaki Naruto, Hari seemed to be the only one actually feeling disturbed about him constantly following Sakura-nee around.

It wouldn't be the first time he'd overreacted about something. Like that time someone grabbed him in a hold _that'd been just like_ -... and Hari had broken their arm, jaw, and tried to bite a chunk out of their jugular.

He'd gotten into trouble for that one.

Apparently he wasn't supposed to be that violent with his classmates, even when they tried to break _his_ bones. Hari wasn't entirely sure how that was supposed to be fair, but he also got the feeling that the Hokage wasn't exactly a fair kind of person.

Strong, important, intelligent, experienced. But about as interested in making the world 'fair' _as the chill of frost in the air_ -... But very much not interested in making the world 'fair' for anyone except himself.

And that was always going to be how the world worked.

XXX

Hari wrinkled his nose.

For all that Sakura-nee was only complaining about one member of her newly appointed team, Hari was pretty sure that it was the worst possible combination all around.

Naruto stalked Sakura, Sakura stalked Sasuke. Naruto and Sakura were both being rejected, and pretending not to hear it. Naruto kept picking fights with Sasuke. And Sasuke probably hated them both with a passion.

For a study-assignment or something, it'd probably be good or something. A 'learning experience'. Forcing them to deal with people they didn't like, so that they _could_ do it even when they didn't want to. Maybe even forcing them to acknowledge that they were good at different things?

Hari could see an Academy-teacher insisting that it was a good experience. No matter how much the members of the study-group would bristle about it.

For an active ninja-team?

Hari wasn't going to say that they were being set up for disaster, but there were definitely alarm-bells with those thoughts going off in his head. Uzumaki Naruto wasn't well-liked, so somebody going out of their way a bit to screw him over sounded vaguely in-character. Uchiha Sasuke was the last survivor of a very old and very large clan, and Hari knew that Sasuke surviving – where many much more experienced shinobi hadn't – had left a few patches of superstitious people from going anywhere near him. Add to that Haruno Sakura being a classical book-smart civilian kid?

Hari knew how civilian-born were looked down at in the Academy. Oh, nobody _said_ anything about it, but it was always there in the condescending glances whenever one of the non-clan-kids didn't quite manage to perform as well as the clan-raised ones. Hari was a Haruno, of course he noticed it. They were looking at him.

So sabotage was a possibility. Not necessarily a likely one, because the Hokage was-... The Hokage was the kind of person who'd not allow someone to sabotage something he could make use of in the future.

There was a comfort to an attitude like that, for all that the man pretended that he wasn't like that. Hari had _known plenty of_ -... When it came down to it, people who wanted to use you were relatively easy to deal with. You just needed to know what they needed you for, and then you could make sure to put various things that annoyed you in between you and any chance of you actually doing what they wanted you to do.

Hari liked Chouji-senpai more than he did the Hokage. But _he had experience_ -... But it wasn't like dealing with the man was horribly traumatizing or something, and Hari had every intention of becoming a ninja. So, if he was treated like an asset for it, then he only had himself to blame.

The life of a ninja was short, violent, and for the good of the Village.

Hari had made his peace with that long _before he ever saw Konoha_ -... He'd made his peace with that a long time ago.

XXX

Listening to Sakura-nee complain about D-Rank missions was vaguely hilarious. For all that she had a tendency to screech her frustration into his ears.

He already had glasses, he didn't want to need hearing-aids added on top of that.

Still, despite how much time she spent with her new teammates, her new sensei hadn't gotten around to visiting their parents yet. Hari would've frowned a lot more about it, except – from what he'd heard from his sister – Hatake Kakashi would end up coming late to his own funeral. Expecting him to act reasonable and have a timely talk with their parents about how he'd definitely keep her safe and not throw her into a battle-to-the-death anytime soon, was probably pushing it.

Hari didn't have an especially good impression of the man, for all that he'd never met him. Sure, if _Hari_ had ended up being in charge of the ticking time-bomb that was Team 7, he would've also done anything in his power to spend as little time with them as possible. But Kakashi was supposed to be a teacher, and that meant that he was to be held to higher standards.

This was why, when Hari finally _did_ run into Team 7 in its entirety one day, he wasn't too impressed with the man who was blatantly trying to pretend as if the children following in his wake weren't in any way his responsibility.

It was like an aura of 'totally not my problem'. To the point where it felt like it'd be quicker and easier to contact the Hokage than Kakashi if the trio did something wrong, even if they decided to burn down half of Konoha right in front of the man's eyes.

If Hari's sister hadn't been included in that nonverbal dismissal, Hari would've actually been impressed.

Excepting Kakashi, Hari had met every member of Team 7 at one point or another. That didn't mean that they'd been formally introduced however, and so when they more-or-less stumbled into each other, Sakura-nee decided to do the polite thing and introduce them properly.

Naruto tried so hard to be charming once he figured out that Hari was Sakura's little brother, that he came off more as offensively smarmy than anything remotely pleasant. Sasuke didn't stop glaring for a single moment, arms crossed and barely vocalizing anything at all. And Kakashi smiled with false cheerfulness behind his mask, and treated Hari as if he was a toddler.

Hari responded by glaring at Naruto until the blond started to visibly sweat. Before, with the grudging politeness of talking to someone they had about as much interest in talking to as they did in watching paint dry, he greeted and introduced himself to Sasuke.

Then he resolutely refused to refer to Kakashi as anything other than 'Hatake-san' with a politely cheerful mask of continuously questioning what classified as 'teaching'.

It was hard to tell whether Sakura was horribly embarrassed or viciously vindicated at her little brother's blatant dislike of her jounin-sensei. Both Naruto and Sasuke clearly enjoyed the show though, even if it was only grudgingly in Sasuke's case.

Kakashi did try poking the bristling little brother of his student into treating him with some manner of respect, but honestly he couldn't really be bothered to care all that much. The green-eyed boy was like a puppy with a grudge. It was adorable.

XXX

Albus had a problem.

It was unfortunately a very public kind of problem.

He'd just so happened to have misplaced the 'savior of the Wizarding World'. And now he couldn't find him.

He'd been suspicious when the owls couldn't track the boy down, even for the official Hogwarts-letter, but everything pointed to the boy still being alive, so there was at least that.

The boy had been sensibly placed with his relatives under the protection of his mother's blood before suddenly disappearing after turning six. Oh, it probably hadn't been the most pleasant of environments, but it was either that or make the child into both a political pawn and a blatant target for any Death Eaters who'd escaped after their master's death.

No, for all that it would likely be an unpleasant childhood, at least it'd be some kind of childhood. That was what he'd decided all those years ago. For all of his fancy titles, Albus couldn't really do much more than that.

At first, Albus had assumed that perhaps the boy had been kidnapped. However, there were no traces of anything magical happening at Privet Drive, and neither were there any traces of anything more muggle-related. So the only possible explanation was for Harry to have run away on his own. Though with how he hadn't done so with anything more than the clothes on his back, it would've been a very impulsive kind of action.

Still, a six-year-old loose in the streets? He'd either be back in a week, or dead within the year. That's what Albus had assumed back then. And so he'd tried his best to find him before the latter happened. Only, the boy had managed to both stay alive up until now and continue to remain completely impossible to locate with any kind of conventional magic.

But the only thing that the Wizarding World cared for in this instance was that Albus Dumbledore had lost their precious Boy-Who-Lived, because young Mr Potter certainly hadn't shown up at Hogwarts upon turning eleven.

Had Albus merely been the headmaster of Hogwarts, he could've shrugged and said that he was doing all he could to locate the boy, even if the letters they sent out seemingly weren't reaching him. Unfortunately, he was both the man who'd placed him with his blood-relatives – whilst assuring everyone that he was being taken care of – and a very important political figure in the Wizengamot.

Basically, until he produced the Boy-Who-Lived, every single proposal that he backed at the Wizengamot? Every single attempt at a reform to perhaps lessen the amount of cruelties hidden away in their society? Blocked. Discarded. Torn to shreds.

He was a politician that nobody was willing to trust. And until he could pull Harry Potter out of thin air, and parade him around like the famous little pawn that he was, everything he'd ever accomplished was deemed completely useless.

So, not only was his guilty conscious of losing Harry Potter urging him onward. Not only was the prophecy that he still wasn't entirely happy to have heard dragging him forward towards a hopeful Voldemort-free future. The entirety of the Wizarding World were staring over his shoulder, demanding him to act immediately or face the consequences of his irresponsibility.

The Boy-Who-Lived couldn't be located by any kind of conventional magic. That was well-proven fact at this point.

But what about non-conventional magic?

Albus didn't exactly want to delve too deeply into whatever tracking-methods might be found in the Dark Arts, but as long as they didn't require living sacrifice, they were all beginning to look like perfectly reasonable things to try.

XXX

Sasuke-kun was dead.

Sakura hadn't really wanted to continue the mission in the first place, but she'd already known she would've been outvoted so there hadn't been any point in objecting, and she hadn't really wanted to leave the people of Wave at Gato's mercy.

And now Sasuke-kun was dead.

It hurt.

Naruto wasn't saying anything at all. Kakashi was still fighting Zabuza over the unmoving body of what had been Sasuke's opponent. Tazuna was standing behind her somewhere.

Sasuke-kun was dead.

Sasuke-kun was dead, and she couldn't do anything at all to help. He was just dead. Had died all on his own when Sakura had been stuck with protecting Tazuna from any more sneak-attacks. Sasuke-kun was dead.

They never should've agreed to go on this stupid mission. The only thing they'd done since graduating had been to pick weeds and paint fences. What the hell did they know about fighting other ninja? They hadn't even fought _bandits_ yet.

But Sasuke-kun had wanted to go on, and Naruto was too recklessly stubborn to care if he was simply rushing ahead with pure misplaced bravado. And Kakashi-sensei was useless.

He'd said that he'd protect them. That he wouldn't let any of his teammates die.

Sasuke-kun was dead.

And, regardless of the Shinobi Rules, the tears just wouldn't stop.

XXX

It was his cute little genin's first brush with the darker side of being a ninja. The truth of being a tool, even when they were people. The truth of being destined to die for some pathetic reason or another, with the best they could hope for being a shallow grave at the end of a life of hardship.

He'd allowed them to choose to continue the mission, more because he'd doubted that Gato would manage to hire someone beyond chunin-ability than because he'd trusted his ability to protect his genin against someone like Zabuza.

After that, he hadn't aborted the mission because he knew exactly how pointlessly stubborn and spiteful his cute little genin could be, if they set their minds to it. He just hadn't wanted to deal with either the insubordination of trying to herd the three of them back to Konoha whilst recovering from chakra-exhaustion, or deal with the endless whining he'd have to put up with as they'd forever complain about everything he ever decided in the future.

And that petty kind of reason had nearly killed one of his students. Would have killed him, if his opponent hadn't happened to be more merciful than he had any right to be.

In respect for that at least, a respectful if shallow grave was the least he could do.

XXX

Sakura-nee was a bit different by the time she came back.

Their parents didn't seem to notice it, and even Ino was more inclined towards grumbling about how _her_ team certainly hadn't managed to go out on some exciting mission like that, than she was to noticing that Sakura-nee was-...

She wasn't hurting. That wasn't it. Hari had seen _enough heartache_ -... Hari was pretty sure he'd be able to notice if Sakura was actually in pain, emotional or not.

It was a dawning kind of dazed horror, combined with something a bit like bravery. That's what had changed about Sakura-nee.

It reminded him of what _his own expression had been_ -... It wasn't necessarily a bad thing. His sister was plenty brave. And she was safe, even if her teacher was still a useless one who refused to teach. He wondered if Kakashi's _hidden eye was green too_ -...

That was what being a ninja was like. Horrible stuff, and adventure and bloodshed _and cold eyes staring out of dead faces and smiles that hid too many teeth and winter winds and green eyes and snow and_ -...

-... _and a queen that knew your name_ -...

XXX

Probably the single most frustrating thing about her little brother, was that he was the worst person she knew when it came to buying him birthday-presents.

Hari didn't throw tantrums about bad gifts or anything. That was in fact part of the problem. He always made that confused but grateful expression. Like he was a pleasantly surprised that they hadn't given him a pissed off rattle-snake this year either.

It wasn't even that he was used to nasty gifts. From what he remembered of before he'd come to Konoha, his relatives mostly just pretended his birthday wasn't a thing that happened. But even so, he still made that vaguely relieved face, no matter what godawful thing somebody gave him.

Their parents weren't exactly... 'good' gift-givers. They were bigger on souvenirs and polite flowers and maybe a small token of some sort. It'd taken Sakura years to train them both into giving her things that she wouldn't simply confine to the back of her closet for the remainder of her life.

Hari hadn't ever bothered. He just made that same expression every time, regardless of how ridiculous or unsuited or even outright pathetic his presents were.

Sakura – not wanting to end up just like her parents – had always tried very hard to give her little brother something that he'd actually be happy to receive, rather than be relieved with. She hadn't really succeeded yet, but she was working on it. And she had a much bigger budget this year.

There were some advantages to having your own mortality thrown in your face for what was likely to be an entire career of close calls and-... and calls where not everyone came back home.

For all that both Naruto and Sasuke had both bounced back with little-to-no change in how they acted around each other, Sakura could still remember that moment all too clearly. But that was the life she'd signed up for.

She was a ninja, after all.

XXX

Albus wasn't entirely happy with the way he'd managed to finally set it up.

It was honestly more a summoning-ritual than it was a locating-one. And if Albus hadn't had as many focuses on Harry's identity as he had, there was no telling what he would've been summoning.

There was the scar on his forehead, his blood-relationship with the Dursleys, Albus's own legal guardianship over the boy, and the Invisibility Cloak of the Potter-family that showed no signs fading.

He'd been _very_ thorough in making sure that that'd be enough, before he'd even considered performing the ritual. And it looked like it would finally pay off.

Yes, Fawkes wasn't all too happy at having to push forward his burn-day by a couple of months, and he'd probably have to burn down the house he'd used to summon him too, just to make sure nobody with less understanding of the ritual tried to replicate it and did something _really_ stupid. But there he was.

Harry Potter in the flesh.

Not nearly as scrawny as most first-years, but then he'd had a full extra year to grow. After all, he should've been a second year, as far as his age went.

The fact that Albus had to restrain the boy from lashing out violently?

Well... that wasn't fantastic. But it meant that he'd probably been more-or-less happy wherever it was that he'd ended up. And that meant that at least the boy had managed to have some kind of a childhood.

The fact that the boy was relying more on trying to punch him or stab him with something also meant that he probably didn't know about magic yet. That was good, because children had a hard time staying mad at someone who promised to show them how to do honest-to-Merlin _magic_.

Things were definitely looking up.

XXX

Kakashi only really had a passing acquaintance with Haruno Hari, despite the obvious antipathy the boy seemed to hold for him.

Still, he was the little brother of the sanest one of his cute little students. And from her grumbling, his birthday was apparently coming up, and he hadn't given her any kind of wishing-list. Again, because apparently he'd avoid doing so as a rule, as Sakura's grumbling brought up time and again.

Beyond that, he'd read the boys file enough to know that Haruno Hari was technically adopted and had been found on the doorstep of Konoha, frostbitten and with little-to-no memory of how he'd ended up there. He did kind of look like a Haruno though, so nobody was going to argue about the Hokage dumping him on them, and the family was happy enough to have him.

That was... pretty much the entirety of what Kakashi knew about Haruno Hari.

He'd come to know a lot about Sakura's facial expressions though, so when she rushed to the meeting-place early in the morning, Kakashi decided to not hang back and pretend to be late.

Her eyes were a bit too wide, hair too wild, and there were signs that she'd been crying.

She didn't even seem to register that Kakashi was there on time, and though the boys probably did, they were focusing more on her than on him.

"Hari is missing!"

And... suddenly it didn't seem all that important that they at least get another D-Rank done today.

That feeling was only reinforced when they couldn't find a single trace of his scent leaving his room. Almost as if he'd been reverse-summoned, like what sometimes happened to Jiraiya and the toads.

Except... the only foreign scent that lingered in that room, was the stench of burning feathers.

XXX

 **A/n: This fic is like a third-generation spin-off of an inspiration that I got waaay back, and it's been just as consistent through the writing-process. Blegh. So glad that it's done. All three chapters of it.**

 **And yeah, this particular iteration of it is loosely inspired by Araceil's "Beneath a Blue Sky" as well.**


	2. Chapter 2

XXX

Fae's Path to Konoha – Chapter 2

XXX

Ron didn't really have a lot of friends.

There were three other boys in the Gryffindor dorms of his year. Two of them basically became the best of friends within hours, bonding over muggle-stuff that Ron honestly didn't know enough about to even feign interest in. And the third was... Neville.

There wasn't anything wrong with Neville. It was just that-... Growing up with five older brothers, one of the first things that Ron had learnt was to take advantage of whatever weaknesses he could find.

It wasn't really all that bad. Once you knew that Percy could barely bend a rule to save his life, and that the twins were too addicted to their own sense of humor to be able to stop themselves from getting into trouble with their mom?

Ron had weaknesses too, but with the careful balance of mutually assured destruction keeping everything in check, life in the Burrow was nice enough.

The problem with all of that was that... Neville had a lot of weaknesses. And one of those weaknesses seemed to be a complete inability to actually notice other people's weaknesses. In other words, he was a target. A big flashy one, like one of those muggle-signs.

Basically, Neville was nice. A bit forgetful and a bit clumsy, but definitely nice. And spending any time with him whatsoever gave Ron cold shivers.

So Ron couldn't really make friends with his year-mates, and had ended up spending time with the only other outcast of Gryffindor House.

Hermione wasn't nearly as nice as Neville, and gave off a very distinct feeling of Percy-likeness. The truth of that however, was mainly that she was completely bonkers, and would break every single rule put in front of her, if she simply decided that it was the right thing to do. She just didn't consider 'fun' to be as important as the 'right thing to do'.

It was a work in progress.

Still, with Hermione and her book-fanatical ways constantly breathing down his neck, it was no wonder that Ron's grades were so good. Nowhere near Hermione's own of course, but it wasn't like Ron really had any other friends to go to.

All of the older Gryffindors were somehow caught up with the twins, or had no time at all for an 'ickle firsty'. The other Houses were kind of... discouraged from interacting with any Weasleys on behalf of the twins and their pranks, and not wanting to invite the redheads into a chance to prank them all. And... that left Hermione.

It'd been pretty pathetic, seeing as Hermione was in a very similar position, except more with her bossy attitude and obsession with books.

They'd had half-a-dozen rows about it during their first year alone. On one occasion even nearly coming to blows, before Hermione had proven faster on the draw and hexed him into dancing for the better part of an hour.

She was still his best friend.

That didn't mean that she wouldn't scream out of sheer impotent rage if she found out that Ron had learnt about Harry Potter's return from his mysterious absence before she could figure it out on her own. That mystery had been keeping her humming around the library for _months_.

There were definitely some advantages to having parents who had a – however distant – friendship with Albus Dumbledore.

In this case, it meant that Ron was the first boy their age who got to meet the Boy-Who-Lived.

It was... an experience.

Ignoring the weird accent, ignoring the refusal to introduce himself, ignoring the refusal to talk about where he'd been, ignoring the way his eyes kept darting towards exits, ignoring the-... Even ignoring a lot of things that Ron wasn't entirely comfortable with ignoring, there was something really messed up with the realization that the only thing in Harry Potter's eyes when he glanced at Dumbledore?

Hatred and fear.

Like a cornered animal.

XXX

Hari had the worst timing for getting kidnapped.

For example, the Chunin Exam was a few days away from being announced, and as it would take place within Konoha this time, they needed as many ninja as possible to hang around as a show of force to the other Villages.

Not only that, but with Kakashi's genin having done decently enough on their misranked C-Rank mission – and knowing that Team 7 would end up as a tempting target should they attend the Chunin Exam elsewhere – this was kind of their only chance at becoming chunin in the near future.

A chance that was now impossible, because Sakura was already stressed to the breaking-point by worry for her little brother. Interestingly enough, despite Kakashi casually dropping this into a conversation with his cute little students – it wouldn't do for them to hear about it elsewhere later on and explode without supervision – they didn't seem to care.

Apparently, for all that Sasuke wanted to quickly advance through the ranks and become powerful enough to achieve his goal of killing his brother, he considered family to be far more important than rank, even if it wasn't _his_ family. Naruto cared more about Sakura's distress than he really did about Hari's situation, but he _did_ care, and he wasn't going to complain about something like rank when he had a 'precious person' to help.

He'd either manage to hold onto that idealism, or he'd be crushed underneath the weight of it. Kakashi would probably bet on the former honestly. The boy's parents had been surprisingly heartless in combat, for all of their warmth elsewhere, so he had good odds for finding an ideological equilibrium on the genetic side of things.

Regardless, with all of Team 7 decided, they were of course going to search for Sakura's little brother.

No matter what the Hokage had to say about it.

Kakashi nearly winced when he heard Naruto declare that at the top of his lungs.

Sure, the boy was on good terms with the Hokage, and was afforded some extra leeway on behalf of being a jinchuuriki that nobody wanted to see go berserk, but there was a limit about the kind of insubordination you could run around screaming from the rooftops.

Kakashi might toe the line sometimes with his perpetual tardiness, but that was more for social events than for missions, and he was never... 'loud' about it.

It's easier to ignore someone toeing the line if they're not constantly reminding you that that's what they're doing at the top of their lungs. People don't like being reminded of things like that. They tend to take offense to it. And even if offending the Hokage whilst under his employ wasn't a death-sentence by any means, it wasn't exactly... pleasant.

Thankfully for everyone's sanity, Sasuke quickly kicked the blond in the shin, and then they failed to continue their bickering because Sakura was red-eyed and twitchy. They were trying really hard to not be the ones to trigger her into another crying-fit. His kids were so adorable.

In the end, the Hokage decided not to attempt being an obstacle in this matter. Though he did have T&I dump their entire file on Haruno Hari – including the theories surrounding his arrival outside Konoha – in front of Kakashi, and order him to thoroughly debrief his students on it, in case this was somehow related to that.

It wouldn't do for them to get lured into an ambush because they trusted Sakura's little brother too blindly. It _was_ entirely possible that this wasn't an involuntary abduction after all. Better they all be prepared for the worst.

XXX

Hari didn't like Hogwarts.

He'd literally been kidnapped from out of his bed and dropped back into a country that he'd _already escaped once_ -... into a country he had absolutely no fond memories of, and told that he was now a celebrity with no control over his own life. He was physically constrained to remain within the old castle with shitty heating and the same nasty individuals who'd kidnapped him in the first place. Everyone stared at him like he was some kind of damn exotic exhibit in a zoo. And on top of all of that, he'd somehow ended up in his second year, despite never being there for his first, so he didn't know anything at all about what was going on in the curriculum that all of the professors demanded that he care about.

The only thing remotely good about Hogwarts was Ron and Hermione. And that was probably pushing it. It was more that they were tolerable, with Hermione having been silently seething at Dumbledore from the moment that Hari mentioned never seeing his sister again, and Ron physically grabbing the girl and more-or-less sitting down on top of her before she did something that would get her deep enough into trouble that they wouldn't be able to help themselves, let alone Hari.

All in all, kids who hadn't gone to Konoha's Academy were weird. Very civilian really, despite how they apparently trained a lot in bizarrely domestic kinds of ninjutsu.

The Sorting Hast was freaky too. Kept moaning about where everything was, as if it was trying to find something that _it could never find_ -... Having someone read your mind wasn't so strange for someone who'd grown up around the Yamanaka clan, but it wasn't done for security or anything. They just did it because they thought it was clever to divide their school into groups and then cheerfully reinforce their rivalries for no reason.

He still wasn't entirely sure what the hell Dumbledore had done to bind him to Hogwarts or force him to obey his arbitrary rules of 'no violence'. It _reminded him eerily of winter_ -... The only thing that seemed vaguely reminiscent of it was the Blood Prison in Kusagakure. And the mechanics of that place was a jealously guarded state-secret.

Regardless, he was trapped. And unless the Hokage decided that a single civilian-born Academy-student was worth rescuing from unknown assailants, and they managed to find their way to Hogwarts, in a world where the Elemental Nations didn't show up on any maps? No rescue was coming for him.

It was just him, alone. Trapped underneath the thumb of a man _who knew his name_ -...

And, worst case scenario, his sister would try to _follow green eyes through the mirror_ -...

-... _and to the queen who hated everything to do with 'spring'_ -...

XXX

Albus wasn't entirely sure what he was supposed to do with Harry Potter.

The Wizarding World was back to praising Albus for his many deeds, so at least that part was over and done with. No, the problem mainly stemmed from the fact that Harry was starving himself.

Or, rather, he _should_ be starving himself. He wasn't eating anything served to him, regardless of taste, and yet he wasn't showing any signs of starving. It was strange.

Still, as long as the boy didn't die and didn't cause any scandals, Albus didn't really need to worry. And he'd been very thorough in the binding-runes to keep the boy from airing anything damning about Albus's methods.

He'd even gone so far as to use the Fidelius Charm to hide away the truth behind how he'd bound him to Hogwarts. The boy was clever, better not risk giving him something to work with.

The whole thing made him feel vaguely guilty, admittedly. But this was Harry's heritage. The ones who should've truly been feeling guilty should've been the ones who'd tried to keep him away from it for all these years.

Magic was in the boy's blood, after all.

XXX

The problem with tracking down a boy who'd disappeared without a trace from his own bedroom, was that there weren't actually any traces to track.

Then again, the lack of traces was in itself a kind of trace, in the sense that it obviously had something to do with either the Summoning Realm or some kind of space-time ninjutsu.

Considering how Konoha had more or less a monopoly on the latter, the former seemed more likely. Of course, had it been the latter, it would've also left them without a place to search, so they were lucky that the signs pointed to the former.

Sakura had calmed down somewhat from her earlier frantic behavior, and her face had instead settled into something cold and harsh. The boys were still more than a bit wary of her, but that might be because – during the delay to contact Jiraiya – she'd taken to using one of those hospital-issued stress-balls designed for being squeezed. And then she'd popped it, and instead moved on to squeezing rocks... into dust.

Kakashi was reluctantly impressed, honestly.

Jiraiya had been very obviously aware of the girl's hands when he'd finally arrived, probably awkwardly reminded of his own teammate's moods. Though the idea that Sakura had a path ahead of her on par with Tsunade of the Senju? Kakashi kind of doubted it, but would admit to a vague sense of pride at the insinuation anyway.

As for the actual tracking?

There weren't any scent-tracks that they'd managed to find – though that hadn't been surprising considering how they'd landed among the Toads, rather than any burning birds – but questioning their hosts had led to a few interesting tidbits that might help.

There weren't really a lot of Summoning Clans that actually had feathers, and not a single one of them would've willingly been playing around with fire. Then there were the many rules and stipulations of reverse-summoning, that all seemed to amount to the summoned individual having written their name on a Summoning Contract.

Basically, there was _some_ chance that one of the Clans was responsible for the abduction, but it was miniscule at best.

They didn't really get any further in their questions until Naruto had brought up how Hari didn't remember anything about how he'd ended up on Konoha's doorstep. And his age at that time.

Kakashi had never before seen a toad go pale, and he desperately hoped he wouldn't ever have to do so again. It was pretty nasty.

"There was... a boy." The toad-sage frowned heavily. "Who won back his name from the Queen of Winter. It was... enough of a mess for a few Clans on the fringes to hear about it."

"A queen?" Naruto perked up. "Is that like a princess or something?"

The toad-sage's frown turned a lot more annoyed than worried. "The Queen of Winter is more a goddess than you humans and your titles!" He looked like he wanted to hit Naruto over the head with his cane for emphasis, but thankfully Naruto was clever enough to stand well outside of his range after the first three times it'd happened. "She's one of the two who rules over the Fae Realms."

So... something even more distant than the Summoning Realm. "What kind of a mess?"

"Oh, the usual really." The toad-sage snorted. "Human was invited in, didn't die, kept on not dying, didn't accept their 'hospitality' and so wasn't imprisoned for the next couple of centuries, and then didn't die when he left them either. They always were sore losers."

The distinct sound of a fist-sized rock cracking apart into dust.

"What do you mean about their 'hospitality'?" Sakura's voice was eerily calm, as she shook away the rock-dust from her hand.

The toad-sage gave her a glance that probably would've been wary if the girl hadn't had pink hair and been barely into her teens, but relaxed backwards into his throne. "The Fae Realms have rules that need to be followed at all times. It's-... Imagine if using chakra required you have a tea-ceremony with your enemy every time. Except that that's been a thing for the last millennium, and tea-ceremonies have changed into something that is... on the surface the same, but under the surface very _very_ different."

"What the hell does that even mean?" Naruto complained.

The toad-sage threw his cane at Naruto's head. He dodged with a squeak.

"It means that they have a thousand different rules that they're obeying at any given time, and that they demand that everyone around them do too. And if someone breaks those rules, then they're dead. The same is generally true if they _follow_ the rules, of course, seeing as how the fae don't age and have their entire lives to hone their ability to trick people into following the rules straight off a cliff."

"And a boy managed to escape?" Kakashi frowned slightly, trying to imagine it.

"Well, yes." The toad-sage huffed. "For all of their rules, fae aren't really very good at capturing children. Maybe they place nice with them, maybe they're too used to dealing with the minds of adults, who can say? The only reason the Queen threw a fit was that the fae who'd stolen him away in the first place had promised to take him somewhere better than where he'd been. They're mostly just supposed to tempt them with great parties and tasty food, not with an actual better life."

"Why not?" In Kakashi's experience, those kinds of promises tended to be the ones most likely to be accepted.

The toad-sage shook his head. "The Fae Realms are filled with tasty food and parties, but you'd have better luck for a 'better life' in the Bloody Mist. And they aren't allowed to lie."

"And you're certain that it's the same boy?" Jiraiya asked, a thoughtful frown on his own face.

The toad-sage nodded. "The fae guard their belongings viciously. And any memory one might have from their time as a guest under their roof? Claiming that as their own when he left would've hardly been unusual. And nothing that belongs to them would ever be allowed to escape from the Fae Realms."

"So they stole his memory, or he left it behind somehow?" Sasuke was the one who spoke up this time.

Kakashi made a thoughtful sound of his own, and then clapped his hands together with a smile. "Well! That's very informative, but it still doesn't tell us where Hari-kun might've gone."

And if they went to the Fae Realms and somehow managed to come out the other end – without losing anyone on the way – they still probably wouldn't remember anything they went in there in order to find out, so that was really a dead end.

"The Fae Realms doesn't steal humans from the Elemental Nations." The toad-sage sighed. "They steal them from a lot of different worlds, but not yours. It's entirely possible that one of those world had some way to bring him back to where he was born."

"Then-... Where is my little brother?" Sakura's voice cut clear through the room, and-... Oh boy, she'd run out of stones and was now slowly crushing a kunai into a ball.

Kakashi really probably should address that behavior somehow. But that was for a different day.

"It's not that they don't want to, it's that they can't steal from our world, isn't it?" Jiraiya asked, and upon receiving a small nod from the toad-sage, he continued. "It's not chakra or anything like that, otherwise Hari probably wouldn't have had it either. So... they only steal humans from their own neighborhood?"

And that was the start of several hours worth of arguing about the theoretical mathematics of space-time, along with a few attempts from Naruto to draw out a map in order to be able to listen to at least that half of what they were talking about without getting a headache.

The Fae Realms had a location, same as their own world and that of the Summoning Realm. That meant that they had a location relative to the other worlds around them. That meant that the amount of worlds that Hari could've originally been stolen away from was limited.

And what do you know, within the week, they'd managed to narrow down the suspects to about a dozen different worlds. Worlds as large – or even larger – than the entirety of the Elemental Nations.

Sakura had also stopped destroying quite so much of her environment. Mainly because Kakashi had had the bright idea to train the distraught girl into chakra-exhaustion. Daily.

XXX

Hermione had met a lot of traditional people in her life. Ignoring her own family, she'd read enough books where politics had been a feature to know that tradition-oriented people stuck to their traditions because that was the way they'd always been doing them.

So when Harry – who never ate anything, despite how Ron's brothers had pointed out the kitchen to him, hoping to help – refused to show up at Halloween, Hermione's first thought was simply that the boy wanted to avoid the food for some reason.

However, seeing as it was _Harry_ deciding to refuse attending, Hermione didn't immediately blurt that out. Harry was... twitchy.

Having thought about it a little bit further, she'd realized that it'd be the anniversary of his parents' deaths, and that that was probably a very sensitive kind of time of the year for him. Still, not wanting to assume anything when it came to Harry – and his sometimes outright bizarre habits and views of the world – Hermione had gone as far as to ask him why.

Despite everything, it was becoming increasingly obvious to Hermione that it was easiest to deal with Harry by being bluntly honest and then being ready to back away to a safe distance very quickly in case he ever took offense.

Turns out, he'd never really known the date, even if he hadn't been surprised by it. As if he'd always kind of suspected it, but never cared enough to find out the truth. But without that as the reason, Hermione had felt comfortable pushing a bit more intently for an explanation for why he refused to be in the Great Hall during the celebrations.

His response was... perfectly Harry-like, in that it was strange enough to leave her puzzling over it for hours afterwards.

"Your celebrations are not mine, your feasts are not mine, and your invitations will never be accepted."

Ron had suggested that it might simply be that he'd grown up without Halloween, and didn't feel comfortable even remotely participating in a celebration that he himself didn't celebrate. Which had sounded simple enough of an explanation, but it was just-...

Any kind of official invitation was always refused, he distanced himself at every opportunity, he kept a perfectly polite facade no matter how teachers and students decided to insult or praise him, he only obeyed direct and explicit orders from professors during classes and never did his homework, and he refused to introduce himself to anyone at all. And where exactly had he gone, to find a sister who'd never heard of the Boy-Who-Lived, and how far away had he traveled that it'd taken Albus Dumbledore over a year to even find him with all of the magic at his disposal?

Hermione had always been very fond of puzzles, even though this one didn't seem to have any perfect answer in the shape of books, it sounded familiar enough.

Even Hogwarts's library had a few story-books, fairytales that were obviously nothing more than that. And even if it grated at Hermione to try to find substance in those things – unlike that blonde dazed-looking first year girl that often wandered around the aisles – she'd always enjoyed a good book to pass the time.

Of course, for a muggleborn witch, a few of those symptoms would seem damningly familiar.

"Harry, was there winter or summer where you lived?" Hermione asked, carefully casual, even alone as the three of them were.

He might not be able to respond to where he'd been exactly, or how Dumbledore had 'rescued' him, but he'd dropped hints that he'd been adopted into a family. And that meant that a few 'trivia' should be able to slip through whatever Dumbledore had done to keep his tongue from revealing something Dumbledore didn't want them to hear.

Ron sent her a confused glance, probably wondering how she'd gone from holiday-celebrations to seasons, but Harry's own brief confusion turned suspiciously still.

"Not really." Harry's stillness turned into a frustrated frown, before slipping away again. "Can't remember whether I passed through it or not though."

That was-... That was probably more information of where he'd disappeared to than anyone had managed to get out of him in his entire time at Hogwarts. And Hermione suddenly felt... oddly cold, a creeping chill sending shivers down her spine.

Because Harry referred to summer and winter as a _place_. And Hermione only knew of two places that went by those names.

The seelie and the unseelie. The Fae Courts of Summer and Winter.

"Oh." Hermione breathed out, voice a little bit choked. "Sorry for bringing it up."

Then she sent a glare at Ron when he opened his mouth to ask what they were talking about. She'd tell him later.

But... before that-... Before she did anything else, Hermione suddenly wanted to see if Hogwarts had some kind of record of 'what the students agreed to upon attending'.

Because if Harry wasn't messing with her – and he never lied, never pretended – then their Good Neighbors were actually out there. And if anything she'd ever read about fae was true? Then it'd be best for all of them to be _very_ aware of whatever contracts they'd agreed to.

Just in case a fae happened to somehow have been involved during the writing of that contract.

Fae could live for a very long time after all, and they were quite notorious with how they dealt with oath-breakers.

XXX

There was this tiny issue with having dozen of worlds the size of – or bigger than – the entirety of the Elemental Nations to search for one boy. Namely, that it was pretty much impossible. A needle in a haystack, in a city filled with haystacks.

Unfortunately, that was their only clue, and since backing out wasn't really an option, onwards they searched. Kakashi could technically call the mission to an end, but his students were very much still in the process of 'becoming loyal ninja of Konoha', and forcing them to actively betray the ideals he'd tried to implant on them to foster loyalty among comrades? To convince them to leave a kidnapped teammate's little brother to whatever whims his captors might have in store?

Kakashi had the authority to write the mission off as a loss and return back to Konoha. That still didn't mean he was stupid enough to try using it.

Surprisingly enough, his cute little genin seemed to absolutely thrive away from the Village. Possibly it was because – with Sakura worrying about her little brother – they could all find some kind of common ground in their shared trauma. Possibly it was because Sakura had never really been the type to try all that hard to attach herself to Sasuke if there weren't any girls around to threaten her position – or her needing to deflect Naruto from being obnoxious. Possibly they just enjoyed time away from the distractions of their non-professional lives.

As long as it didn't ever come down to an actual desire to leave the Village and never return, Kakashi could really care less about their reasons. It was a fun thought to play around with, but – being himself – Kakashi could never even really try to fool himself into understanding the emotions of people around him. It was part of the reason why he'd so happily developed his many aggravating personality-traits. Annoyance was super-easy to spot in people, and annoyed people were pretty easy to predict, once you got used to it.

His cute little students didn't seem to have a lot of annoyance left in them to aim his way, so he was just completely out of luck on that front. Oh well.

He supposed that kids had a tendency to adapt to most anything you threw at them. No matter how much they needed to twist themselves into neurotic messes in order to do so. Him succeeding to annoy them with his mere presence alone should've always been something to be considered as a temporary thing.

From here on out, he'd have to come up with actual _plans_ to annoy his cute little students.

After all, stuck on a long-term mission like this one? You really had to come up with your own form of entertainment.

XXX

Hari didn't remember what had followed the green-eyed man in the mirror.

It was a moment of reaching out for the man's hand through the glass, and then opening his eyes to Konoha, trying to silently shake away the numb – _cold, so cold, thought he'd never be warm again_ – feeling in his fingers, and silently telling himself not to cry. _So relieved, so awed to see green and living things, to see kindness in the face of a stranger_ -...

So he really didn't know what might've happened in between those two moments. But he'd known that the man in the mirror was a fae before he'd ever reached for his hand.

Why he'd been the one spirited away? Why he'd landed himself on Konoha's doorstep of all places? That he didn't know. Neither did he know whether or not they'd let him go with a happy wave or with a vicious snarl-...

-... _the queen never let anyone go free when she could tear them to shreds and have her hounds devour them whole_ -...

-... Or however long he might've remained in the between. It wasn't like time wasn't infamous for not passing as it ought to within the realms of the fae. That Hari didn't think he looked any older than when he'd gone in said some things, and that his age apparently agreed with what Dumbledore had expected it to be also said some things.

They, however, didn't necessarily paint a perfect picture of whatever it might be that they were saying. Assuming otherwise when fae were involved wasn't exactly the wisest of options.

Hermione's willingness to both spot it and then accept it, had been somewhat surprising. He'd heard her argue with Ron enough times to understand that she didn't put a lot of faith in things that hadn't been properly recorded, and fae were... well, a bunch of fairytales.

Then again, so were wizards and witches and magic and everything related to it, in this world. Who was to say what might've been hidden away inside of a story so unbelievable that the magical people couldn't be bothered to try erasing it completely.

Honestly though, Hari would've been more willing to expect that initial leap in logic to ask about winter had it come from Ron. The boy was just... an awful lot better at dealing with people, no matter how willing Hermione was to try and pry open any puzzle she could get her hands on.

Perhaps it was simply that Hermione was more used to hearing about the fairytales where the fae actually featured.

Ignoring the mightily suspicious way that he refused to speak his name, no matter what, Hari hadn't eaten a single bite since he'd been forcefully brought to this world. Logically, it should've killed him.

Several of the professors had made comments about it being impossible to create food with magic. Personally, Hari had his doubts about that, but perhaps his trip through the mirror had left him... 'unaligned' enough with this world to not starve in it as time passed. No matter how many nights he was kept awake by the screaming agony in his empty stomach.

It would've _been worse to give them proof that he accepted the hospitality of his kidnappers_ -...

He could live with a few sleepless nights.

XXX

It wasn't so much a clue, as it was that – after wandering around the first world they'd managed to get to – it turned out that the fae left... tracks.

Less in the sense of Kakashi's dogs tracking them down – and very much not in the sense of following the trail of destruction – and more that chakra was very different in the world they'd arrived in. Different, but not nearly as outright alien as the strange sense of something else having... broken through and spilled over, staining the not-chakra of the world in a way that gave everyone with the vaguest sense of chakra-sensing the creeps.

So, it wasn't a _clue_ , but it was definitely a lead.

They didn't need to go dig through the entire cities' worth of haystacks in the hope of finding one person. They just needed to track down every 'stain' that they could find in those worlds, and then see if there were any clues to Hari in particular in those places.

Kakashi was quite happy with that, because it meant that now he was stuck with a mission that'd likely last them a couple of years, instead of a couple of decades. Progress.

Also an interesting way to convince his cute little genin to work on their chakra-sensing abilities.

If Kakashi had to get the creeps, then he was going to share the experience with everyone he possibly could.

XXX

One of the rules that he couldn't disobey was to hurt others – Hari wasn't entirely sure of to what extent that one stretched. A sort of subclause to that rule was that he shouldn't be holding onto weapons beyond the 'wand' that they'd given him.

Hari was pretty sure that Dumbledore had messed with the wand somehow, and the way that it pulled on his chakra always felt unnatural, so he wasn't all too fond of it. Admittedly, that might simply be how they were designed to work, but Hari sincerely doubted that Dumbledore would've given him unrestricted access to a tool that could be so severely abused.

No, using his wand was something to be avoided at all costs, beyond doing only exactly what the professors demanded of him and only when they demanded it. He was here as a prisoner, and he wasn't going to let anyone forget that. Especially not himself.

But the idea of a weapon was such a fluid concept, and Dumbledore had already introduced a loophole in order to try and tempt him into using the wand.

A solid iron spoon was _lethal in the Court_ -... just as dangerous as senbon if you knew how to use them, and yet nobody here would consider it a 'weapon'. And Hari could hold one without any issue, could even throw one with some force – though he'd never tried it against anyone yet – so clearly it was more related to Dumbledore's perception of weaponry than Hari's.

Which might seem inconsequential since he doubted that he'd be able to kill the man with a spoon when he'd been unable to do so with kunai, but every True interpretation of a rule needed to be examined to understand his options. And Hari hadn't used fuuinjutsu against Dumbledore during that first and only real fight.

Mainly, he hadn't used it because he didn't _know how to use it_. He might be able to trigger explosive notes, but he was an Academy student, and nobody would be crazy enough to give high-grade explosives to children without some kind of supervision. He'd seen them used, he'd watched as a chunin had created a very basic one as a demonstration in class once, and he'd been briefly taught how to handle them without blowing himself up.

That was it. That was everything he knew about fuuinjutsu.

It was ink on paper, completely innocuous, until it was triggered. And Hari doubted that the 'do not harm'-rule would have time to stop him if he set it up properly. Nothing dangerous, nothing dangerous, a brief spark of chakra in the right spot... and death.

 _Howling biting winds, tortured screams, and the sickening stench of burning flesh_ -...

-... _a promise of safety broken, and impotent hatred from behind ice-blue eyes_ -...

-... _green eyes behind a bowed head of shattered glass, and the certainty that his mother had loved him_ -...

Hari couldn't really say that he was looking forward to the possibility of killing the man. But he was a ninja. And he would do what was needed to return home.

Before his sister _had to walk through the snow_ -... Before his sister had to risk her life to find him.

XXX

When they finally found Sakura's little brother, Kakashi was going on a vacation.

No, that would've been silly. No, what he was going to do was retire. Preferably to a small room in a basement somewhere where he never ever had to go out and deal with _anything_ ever again.

Turns out, the places that fae tended to frequent were... varied.

Everything from perfectly normal human neighborhoods, to normal non-human forests, to jungles filled with tiger-sized insect-like creatures that bled acid, to some kind of endless breeding-orgy of something vaguely humanoid, to one place that was definitely too close to the Faerie Realms to be considered 'outside' of them.

And if Kakashi ever saw himself in a mirror ever again, it'd be far too soon.

They'd also had a few run-ins with some individuals who worked as 'scouts' to the fae. Mostly, they seemed harmless, but that was probably because Sakura would've made a fantastic civilian lawyer. Kakashi supposed that he shouldn't be relying on his genin student to get them out of trouble, but he wasn't going anywhere near anything that smelled that much like blood and rot and sex. Puking on people was rarely considered good manners, and the fae were big on that.

So Sakura smiled without showing any teeth, and she never let anything related to who they were or what they were doing slip. And then the fae-person would huff and puff for a bit, before disappearing off to sulk. Or to find easier prey. Considering what most of the fae seemed to get up to in their spare time, Kakashi was sure that he didn't actually want to know.

Other than that, Team 7 was doing good. Sakura had stopped accidentally scaring the local wild-life with Killing Intent, and instead now did it entirely on purpose. Naruto had calmed down a lot after that time with the mirrors, apparently having had some great revelation in the middle of everyone else getting horribly traumatized. And Sasuke had been desperately itching for a challenge that didn't keep reminding him that he was on the same level as the class-clown, so the acid-bleeding insect-creatures had been a great help.

Or maybe it'd simply been the way that they'd all nearly gotten eaten, and that it'd convinced him to re-prioritize his life-choices.

Honestly, Kakashi didn't have a clue whether or not his tiny students were handling things well or not, but none of them had had a nervous breakdown in ages. So either they'd become functional human beings, or they'd somehow managed to be traumatized way past the point of caring about it. According to Kakashi's psyche-profile, Kakashi wasn't exactly the right person to determine which side of the fence they'd landed on.

He was pretty sure that meant that he himself had landed on the wrong side early on in his career. Though how he might've done that when he'd been able to touch Pakkun's cute little paws whenever he'd wanted, Kakashi didn't have a clue.

Life was mysterious like that.

XXX

The problem with the idea of using fuuinjutsu to kill off Dumbledore and make his escape was quite simply that Hari knew nothing about it at all.

And he couldn't exactly risk practicing making explosive notes somewhere where people would notice if he ever managed to get it right. After all, the whole plan hinged on the fact that the papers wouldn't be perceived as dangerous. Blowing a hole in the courtyard with the paper beforehand would've made it all too obvious what he was trying to do.

So he needed to not only master the art of fuuinjutsu from half-baked memories without any outside support, he wasn't allowed to do anything resembling actually testing the seals that he came up with.

The hunger-pains keeping him up at night, and the endless staring of the gossiping Hogwarts populace, certainly didn't make him feel any more at ease about the situation.

One year. That was his deadline. If he couldn't manage to kill Dumbledore in one year and escape back to Konoha somehow, then he was probably screwed anyway. Not only would it mean that he would've ended up missing his graduation to genin, after going missing for an entire year the Hokage was likely to call off any possible search-party.

Hari didn't have a clue whether his sister would defy that. If she would continue searching on her own, or if she'd cooperate enough that she would stay _away from the winter and the snow_ -... In the end, it didn't much matter.

If he hadn't managed to kill off Dumbledore by the end of the school year, Hari was going to have to figure out a way to send a message back to his sister not to come looking for him. And he would need to make it convincing, to erase all hope she might have to find him again.

So far, his only idea on how to succeed at _that_ basically consisted of Hari sending her his freshly ripped-out heart or something. That or another vital organ. It was probably a cruel thing to do to her, but _anything was better than her being trapped in the snow_ -...

By the end of the school year, once summer came again. That was his deadline.

Either kill Dumbledore and escape back to Konoha. Or kill himself to somehow send a message to stop Sakura from continuing to search for him.

Good times.

XXX

Sasuke in truth didn't much care for Sakura's little brother one way or the other.

The boy was inoffensive enough that he simply didn't pay any attention to him until Sakura had become his teammate. And even then, interactions with Hari were almost entirely limited to watching him talking to other people, such as Kakashi-sensei or Naruto.

The overall impression was that of a forgettable civilian-born Academy-student, who'd learnt somewhere that politeness made it easier to be rude to people.

Considering exactly how the fae they'd been running into had acted, it was in hindsight damningly obvious where he might've picked up on that particular personality-trait. But that was an impression he'd only really unraveled since the kidnapping.

When Sakura had first come barreling into the training-field to ask them to help find her little brother, he'd been annoyed by it. Ignoring that he didn't like being reminded of the existing families of other people, they were supposed to be taking missions and become stronger. That was the whole point of being a genin. A mere stepping-stone in their careers, until the chunin exam gave them a chance to leave that behind them.

Having that delayed because Sakura's useless little brother went and got himself kidnapped, hadn't exactly been very high on Sasuke's priorities.

That initial antipathy had faded in the months since then.

Yes, some of that was the nagging sensation of sympathy towards Sakura, whose mixture of worry and impotent rage struck a cord in his own memories. But some of it was also because of them beginning to unravel exactly what the hell kind of path Hari must've taken through the Fae Realms in order to even get to Konoha in the first place.

Two sides of a coin, the fae's two factions were named after the seasons, with 'summer' being the one that only ate people some of the time. As in, for all that they were insane psychopaths by the standards of most humans, they were still considered relatively 'nice' as far as the fae were concerned.

And Hari had gone through 'winter' in order to get to Konoha.

The details of it all were obviously sketchy, and some of it seemed to be pointing towards there having been different factions within 'winter' that had used him to help further their own goals somehow. But Sasuke had been watching Sakura dealing with enough 'nice' fae during the span of their mission, that he was becoming rather desperately attached to the girl's ability to talk herself out of trouble.

The idea of a six-year-old managing to do the same with the 'nasty' side of things?

Sasuke could admit that he was sort of reluctantly impressed by it, even if he couldn't remember ever having seen Hari actually demonstrating that ability. As it was, he was willing to give the boy the benefit of the doubt until they met again and they could ask him some very pointed questions.

Besides, even if it wasn't fighting enemy ninja and officially climbing the ranks, spending month after month out in the field, constantly getting into trouble with completely bizarre things trying to eat their faces?

There were definitely worse ways to spend their time. And at least this way he didn't have to listen to Sakura and Ino trying to out-shout each other over who thought he was most good-looking. Even Naruto had stopped yelling about becoming Hokage every two minutes, so that was also a clear improvement.

On the other hand, their mission being what it was, it also meant that they were camping out in the middle of winter during a goddamn blizzard, so there was that too.

XXX

Naruto's feelings towards Sakura's little brother could mostly be summed up as Hari being Sakura's little brother.

Sakura was amazing, and pretty, and Naruto knew that it was important to make a good impression on a girl's family if you were to stand a chance at making her like you.

So, originally, he'd tried to be nice to the boy who kept smiling that creepy polite smile at Kakashi-sensei. Then he'd gotten used to Hari's special brand of dislike, and the way that it was only really actively aimed Naruto's way when he blurted out something a bit too loudly.

Naruto wasn't Hari's friend. He would've liked to have been, but-... But he would've liked it probably not because of any good reason.

He was better now though!

Watching Sakura worry about her little brother, seeing her use that worry to force herself to outperform both Sasuke and himself in training whenever she could, feeling the weight of that constant undirected anger almost reminding him of that illusion-demon of Zabuza's final moments, and then watching her smile and pretend at happily polite innocence at everyone they met.

Naruto wasn't entirely sure when he'd realized that thinking of Sakura was more about how scary she was than how cute she looked. But that'd probably been the beginning of the end of his crush on her.

A crush he felt mostly embarrassed about now, to be entirely honest. Sure, Sakura was cute and all, but she was also really not interested and hadn't ever shown any hint of interest in even talking to anyone except Sasuke and Ino.

Speaking of, Naruto had a vague memory of carefully making sure that he never interrupted Ino and Sakura sitting with their heads together giggling about Sasuke. Interrupting them when they were actively fawning or swooning, that pissed them off, but when they were alone-... Naruto didn't really understand why, other than that girls were weird and didn't want him butting in on girl-time or something, but they always got extra-angry about that.

So Naruto felt a bit embarrassed about having run around after Sakura, 'seducing' her by shouting at her about random stuff.

Admittedly, he'd never really seen anyone seduce anyone before, so it wasn't like he could've guessed that he'd been doing it wrong. Though now that he had-...

Naruto could sort of understand why Hari didn't like him. Naruto would've been really suspicious of anyone trying to flirt with Ayame-nee, even if she actually seemed to be enjoying herself. The idea of someone jumping at her and shouting about stuff when she clearly didn't want to be bothered by them? Naruto would've probably decked them.

He was kind of happy that he hadn't been very good at the whole seduction-thing when he'd tried to get Sakura to notice him though. That'd been really-...

He was never going to complain about Sakura being the person talking to the fae. They were creepy even when they tried to be nice. Especially then, actually.

Polite smiles were one thing. Naruto could kind of understand why smiling brightly at people was as good an idea as glaring at them. It was what he'd been doing for years, after all. No, the problem was how... slimy they all were. Like-... Like somebody sneaking something nasty into ramen, before offering it for free, all warm and delicious, just a tiny little taste, all for free.

Fae were creepy and unpleasant, and Naruto felt no shame at all about hiding behind Kakashi-sensei whenever they showed their ugly too-pretty faces. Even if Sasuke made mocking noises afterwards. Sasuke just did that because he was an asshole.

The final straw that'd convinced him that he didn't have a crush on Sakura any more came down to the mirrors though. The mirrors and _green eyes staring back at him through a broken reflection_ -... Naruto wasn't entirely sure why that'd been the tipping point.

One moment he'd been himself, the next he'd been himself. Kurama still as grumpy as he'd ever been, and the world as filled with nasty people as it'd always be. And the sun would rise tomorrow, so there wasn't any point in keeping a grudge about it setting today. Life was life, and beating up people who didn't like you wouldn't suddenly make them like you.

Beating up people trying to kill you and your friends, whilst shouting at them that they were being assholes for picking a fight in the first place, was entirely acceptable. Just... punching someone in the nose would just make them want to punch you back, if only to prove to themselves that they _could_ do that much.

Kakashi used to say that 'an eye for an eye makes the world blind', whenever Naruto brought that up. It wasn't a very ninja-ish way of looking at it, and Naruto was pretty sure that the only reason that Kakashi had ever even bothered to memorize the obscure temple-person philosophy-saying had been because he had a terrible sense of humor.

He was halfway-blind after having had an eye donated to him from someone else. He probably thought the saying was hilarious. Weirdo.

XXX

 **A/n: So Hermione has started to piece together a few of the clues, and Naruto doesn't need to travel** _ **through**_ **a mirror to learn something about himself in them. (AKA, how** _ **did**_ **Naruto suddenly learn Kurama's name? He certainly** _ **can't remember**_ **-...)**

 **The next chapter will be the last.**


	3. Chapter 3 Epilogue

XXX

Fae's Path to Konoha – Chapter 3 + Epilogue

XXX

Christmas at Hogwarts was always a kind of magic all to itself.

However, whilst last year she'd been fretting over her grades, this time she was fretting over more extracurricular projects. To the point where she'd actually canceled her plans to spend Christmas with her parents.

She might not be the best of friends, but she wasn't enough of a heel to go spend time with her parents when one of her friends was being held against his will. Unofficially so or not. No, she was going to spend the holidays at Hogwarts until Harry was allowed to go back home.

That she spent her time during those holidays more focused on things only vaguely related to the other boy? She wasn't very good with people, and she had a lot of history and inaccurate stories and blatant propaganda to sort through.

Most every muggle fairytale about magic had proven itself real to some extent, with unicorns and magic and dragons and now apparently fae too. The problem mostly came in that Hogwarts didn't seem to have any proper records whatsoever of the latter.

So, either they weren't real and Harry had somehow managed to traverse worlds and lose his memory of actually doing so in a way eerily reminiscent but-actually-unrelated to fae-abductions, or somebody had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure that fae were erased from the collective factual memory of every wizard in Britain.

The bookworm in Hermione was utterly appalled that someone might police the books in a library, especially considering how Wizarding Britain didn't seem to have any other place to store books beyond Hogwarts. But-... well, Hermione knew that their Good Neighbors were... special.

Who knew if just mentioning them might draw their attention to you? Who knew if magic somehow amplified that effect tenfold? Who knew if there'd once been a long and bloody war to stop the fae from interfering with the Statute of Secrecy?

There were too many unknowns for Hermione to really work up the outrage for it. No, more than anything, she was just worried.

Harry might not have been abducted by fae, but from what little he could still remember? There were no magic ever recorded that included face-less men inside of mirrors, so Hermione was fairly certain of her conclusion on the matter.

That meant that Harry had already been in contact with the fae. That – if they truly had been forcefully ousted from their world, and had their names forever erased from the memories of those who could bring them back – he'd already known enough about them to mention them and draw their attention to their world.

And if Harry was the first one to come into contact with a fae for... possibly hundreds of years, then there had to be a reason. A reason like the fae having somehow been driven away. They were after all supposed to be far too individualistic and spontaneous for them all to simply... go away one day.

Except Harry had been in contact with them, and was now back in Britain. Hermione didn't have a clue what kind of 'rules' that scenario would be bending, but she could guess that _something_ was going to bend enough that the fae started looking for a loophole. And fae always found loopholes, even when there weren't any. Perhaps _especially_ when there weren't any.

But, if fae were real and had at some point been driven away from their world, then it stood to reason that once upon a time they hadn't yet been driven away. And the founding of a school like Hogwarts? A momentous effort like that? Hermione could easily imagine someone ending up in debt during the building-process. The question was to whom.

To the surrounding muggle nobles and their castles? To the old wizard families? To the royalty whose land they built on? To the fae whose homes they built it next to? And had those debts been properly repaid?

Hermione was pretty sure that fae never truly died. Injured and maimed and killed, yes. But fae were supposed to be more concept than mortal, and ideals tended to simply warp when the person who embodied them got themselves killed.

Kill a fae, and the same fae took its place. Diminished and warped, perhaps, but the same nonetheless.

And, with how fae were supposed to hold grudges far better than most mortals would ever be able to manage, for the wizards to have cast them out after the wizards had already taken an offered helping hand previously?

Hermione still wasn't entirely convinced that her current field of research was actually necessary, but it was better than sitting around and stewing in being unable to help Harry.

Ron didn't seem entirely happy to be agreeing with her on the matter, but he did anyway, because she was right. Well, that and Harry was doing a lot of calligraphy or abstract ink-painting or something lately. Kind of fascinating to look at, but generally pretty boring to watch being repeated time and again.

She really only needed to make sure that her name wasn't written down on any contract that might connect her to whomever the fae decided to take their revenge out on. Which... probably wasn't actually that likely for herself, but far more likely for someone like Ron, whose family had been around in the magical world for a very long time.

Which meant that she also needed to figure out if there was some kind of properly legal way to 'cancel' a contract or debt of people long-since dead. Just in case.

XXX

"Have you ever heard of a trophic cascade, before?"

Hari glanced up from another frustrating comparison of whether or not he'd matched the vague memory of an explosive-note. There was a blonde girl standing in front of him, maybe a bit younger than himself.

The girl met his narrowing eyes with a calm blink. "It's a rather newly discovered thing." She continued after a moment. "But it's quite fascinating."

Hari continued to glare at the girl who was interrupting his time in the library in order to ramble on about pointless things. He wasn't going to tell her to get lost, but that didn't mean he had to make her feel welcome.

The girl made a thoughtful humming sound. "Humans will change an ecosystem to be the most convenient for themselves, or they'll change it simply by failing to consider the impact their actions might have on it." The girl sat herself down, apparently completely unbothered by his glare. "But ecosystems are always connected in many different ways. Removing a predator causes its prey to thrive, that one is easy. But what of the prey? How will its feeding-habits change the surroundings? What will happen when there are less prey-bodies rotting away in the mud?"

Hari frowned as he pushed away his fuuinjutsu-attempts. There was something... eerily foreboding about the girl. As if she was on the verge of voicing a point that shouldn't ever be spoken.

The girl tilted her head, her long blonde hair shifting with the motion. "My mother always wondered before she died-..." Her eyes were really blue. "Whatever happened to the Hunt?"

 _-winter winds, gaunt faces, hatred and hatred and frustration and rage, the hungry howls of the dogs, the feasts that were paraded in front of him and yet never served to the inhabitants, the cold winter winds, and ragged teeth in a jaw stretching for his throat-..._

Hari was on his feet and scrambling away from the blonde girl in an instant.

But she didn't move. She just continued staring at him with those too-blue eyes.

"To the prey, surely the removal of a predator is the greatest good." Her voice was so calm. "But to the surrounding world?" A small smile that seemed gentle and kind rather than deranged, despite the words coming from her mouth. "It must be one of the most gruesome evils, for an ecosystem to be so torn apart."

 _-green eyes in a saddened face of broken glass, a single call for help that had been answered in the briefest of loopholes, the despairing fury of the howling winter winds as Harry turned his back on them one last time-..._

Hari turned and fled from the library as fast as his legs could carry him.

XXX

The trace was old and Kakashi doubted that it'd ever been more than faint.

It also lead them to a human settlement, so that was a bit of a relief. Even if the rain was part-snow and the buildings looked like an unholy cross between farms and apartments. Rigid in their uniformity, yet desperately trying to compensate for that with a garden that was so immaculate and bare of useful things, that it would've made a daimyo balk.

Kakashi could've happily lived his life without ever coming anywhere near this place, and from the faces of his students, they most thoroughly agreed with his assessment.

Still, a trace was a trace, and they'd need to get to the source of it and track down whatever they might be able to find on what exactly had happened to give the fae reason to stop by.

Thankfully, the trace was coming from one particular building, so – unless the people living in it were new arrivals – they were probably their best bet on finding information about it.

Unfortunately, the moment the awkwardly thin woman opened the door, she graced them with a screech of hatred and rage that reached a pitch that Kakashi wouldn't have considered unexpected from a dog-whistle.

The attempts to have an actual conversation weren't any less painful.

Though there was a distinct feeling of vicious satisfaction in watching Sakura tear down the entire stairwell in a fit of rage, once the full story came to light.

Also, apparently they suddenly had an actual destination to aim for.

Scotland. Wherever that was.

XXX

Turns out, Scotland was a not-country about the size of Waterfall. Not exactly easy to search, but from what the woman who was apparently Hari's biological aunt had said, it was a place for 'lots of freaks'.

However, considering that both Kakashi and his genin had all spent the last couple of months continuously practicing their chakra-sensing abilities, in order to sense what was more 'the warping of the world's chakra' than the chakra of actual ninja? It didn't seem like an insurmountable obstacle.

One of the reasons that the Hidden Villages had stopped being 'hidden' had been that there hadn't been much point in hiding away from their clients when they couldn't hide away from their enemies anyway.

Chakra-sensing wasn't exactly the most well-used skill, but every Village had at least a few ninja good enough at it to locate the distortion a couple of hundred active ninja would leave on the nearby environment. So even if the Villages were in inhospitable places designed to withstand sieges, all the other Villages would have a map with a pretty good guess on the exact location of the other Villages.

'Hogwarts' probably didn't count as a Hidden Village, but supposedly it was was filled with _some_ kind of ninja, so that was something of a moot point. Simply gathering that many chakra-users in one place for an extended amount of time, should leave plenty enough of a distortion to sense.

And what do you know, three weeks later, and they happened upon a very interesting large-scale genjutsu. A genjutsu hiding away a castle on a hill, along with a small village some distance away.

XXX

Harry had integrated rather badly into the school.

He refused to show up at meal-times, never participated in lessons despite being present during them, and the only two people he spent any time with were the two Gryffindors Ms Granger and Mr Weasley.

On the one hand, it was heartening to see him interacting with a muggleborn and a pureblood on the Light side of the spectrum. On the other hand, there was never any real... passion in those relationships.

Albus had observed many friendships over his many years at Hogwarts, but for all that the three of them got along there was always a distinct lack of closeness in their relationship. Harry remained with them because they sat on the sidelines and allowed him to use their presence to ward off the rest of the school. They were cordial enough, but it was clear that they knew that Harry was there under duress, and had no interest in sticking around if he could help it.

All the magic in the world at his fingertips, and the boy refused to learn.

It was beyond frustrating, listening to his professors growl about a student who should've really been expelled because of his absolute refusal to actually _study_. Albus knew that they had a point, and had it been anyone other than the Boy-Who-Lived, he would've probably agreed. Hogwarts was a school, a place for learning for all that it'd long since become a battleground of politics.

The problem was that Albus couldn't allow Harry Potter to slip through his fingers. He'd barely managed to save his own reputation from the mess of the Boy-Who-Lived not arriving for his first year of school, Merlin knew what he'd have to do to keep things stabilized if the boy suddenly up and vanished again.

That was part of why he'd so carefully bound the boy's magic to not stray outside of Hogwarts.

The house elves he'd asked to check in on him now and again – he couldn't exactly ask them to spy for him, but a periodical check for the sake of the boy's health was acceptable – told him that Harry didn't eat anything from the kitchens either, nor did he seem to be sleeping all that well.

Honestly, Albus didn't have the faintest idea of what Harry was eating to stay alive, but he hoped that he'd run out of it so that he could start to actually show up during meal-times. His current refusal wasn't exactly helping stem the whispers that something strange was going on at Hogwarts, and Albus's damaged reputation could ill afford any more doubt aimed towards him.

Still, it was barely past the winter holidays yet. With more than another five years coming up before the boy's graduation, Albus could afford to wait.

XXX

Hari blinked back to awareness in the middle of the professor's constantly droning voice.

There was-...

Outside.

Hari got to his feet, ignoring the angry bark sent his way, and ran out of the classroom.

He needed to get to them, he needed to-...

Dodging out of the way of a certain poltergeist, and ignoring the angry yells from someone about running in the corridors, Hari made it to the Great Hall in record time.

Just in time for Dumbledore to greet him with a calculating smile, easily blocking the path to four people who were so familiar that Hari wanted to cry.

Sasuke and Naruto were both a little bit taller than he remembered, though Sasuke's scowl had eased and Naruto had stopped fidgeting so blatantly. Kakashi was the same as ever, a bizarre presence of carefully structured disarray. And his big sister was-...

Hari blinked. He didn't think he'd ever seen her making that face before. A kind of pent-up fury, banked with desperate relief as her eyes latched onto him.

She'd been worried. And she'd managed to come find him. Which should've been impossible _because the winter had been driven away along with the summer, a path that'd opened for Hari only because the safety winter had promised him needed to keep him safe from even themselves_ -...

"Nee-chan?" His voice didn't sound like it'd come from himself, hesitant and wavering.

"Hari." Sakura-nee wasn't smiling, even as her eyes burned with relief.

Dumbledore made a move to interrupt, but Hari had been expecting this. He'd known that the headmaster would make his move sooner or later, would let him in close, if only to better keep control of his hostage.

A single strip of paper, carefully hidden from Dumbledore's eyes, but causing several other eyes to widen in recognition, a brief pulse of chakra-...

Hari blinked.

The sky was-... no, that was the ceiling of the Great Hall. His ears were ringing, an endless cacophony of noise. There wasn't any pain-... No, there was _lots_ of pain.

Hari tried to scream, but all that came out was a cough. It tasted like iron.

XXX

Sakura watched with wide eyes as her little brother triggered an explosive note _without a timer_.

She couldn't move. She couldn't stop him. She couldn't do anything except watch as her little brother triggered an explosion that turned his arm into so much chunky red mist.

The old man with the long white beard didn't fare much better, having tried to get distance in that last final moment only to get caught up in the explosion regardless, but Sakura was only watching Hari.

Kakashi burst into motion as Hari's body finally came to a tumbling stop, moving towards him even as he motioned to the rest of them to secure the old man that her little brother had gone to such an effort to kill.

Naruto stumbled a little bit, and Sasuke hesitated, but both boys hurried forward to make sure that the old man didn't have some kind of weird weapon on him. Sakura mostly just blinked, trying not to listen to the ringing in her ears, or feel the way her stomach had turned itself into a knot.

Which was why she was the first to notice the new arrival to the Great Hall.

A girl about their age, with long frizzy brown hair, followed by a redheaded boy of the same age.

The girl took in the scene for a moment before making a horrified noise, and then grabbed the boy's arm when he tried to move towards them.

"Madam Pomfrey!" The girl hissed at the boy.

The eyes of the two new arrivals met for a moment, and then the boy turned on his heels and ran back out of the Great Hall. He was pretty fast for a civilian.

XXX

Kakashi shook his head as he did what he could to stem the bleeding. He was pretty sure that Hari would survive, even if he'd gone into shock. His chakra-system was healthy enough to help him stabilize, and it didn't look like he'd done more than bruise a few vital organs.

Oh, his arm was gone and any chance at starting a career as a ninja in the field was more or less completely down the drain without two arms to make hand-seals with, but he'd live. That was more than could be said about most people crazy or desperate enough to set off untested explosive notes on people with nothing but their bare hands.

The old man who'd tried to stop him from rushing to their side on the other hand, was probably going to die. Most of his torso was scattered across the hall, and he was old enough that something like that would really screw him up as far as shock went. He might maybe survive if this 'Madam Pomfrey' was the second coming of Tsunade, but even if she managed to pull off a miracle, he'd be lucky to survive a year without his health dwindling away into nothing from the shock to his system.

Still, he was struggling to speak even so. Which was impressive in its own way, even if Kakashi was fairly sure that these people could throw ninjutsu around with just the words, making him more than a bit wary of it.

"No-..." A rattling breath through a half-shredded lung. "No, the prophecy-..." A cough that splattered red across what little hadn't already been dyed red. "He's the-... the chosen one-..."

The brown-haired girl stared down at the old man with something that was a mixture of terror and contempt. A civilian terrified by the sea of blood, and yet finding herself dawning to the realization that she didn't actually feel any sympathy for the victim.

Considering that this man seemed to have just admitted to having been the one to steal Hari away from his family for the sake of something as vague as a prophecy? Kakashi couldn't blame her for taking exception to it.

"What prophecy, headmaster?" The girl asked.

The man's pale blue eyes turned towards her, a desperate light in them. "The power-..." A desperate breath. "The power the Dark Lord knows not-..." Another cough.

A moment of confusion, then of terror, then of rage, then of thoughtfulness. "'Flight from death'." She turned towards Hari, hurriedly making her way over. "Harry? Can you hear me? What does the winter hunt?"

Kakashi frowned, wondering how exactly this girl knew about the Fae Realms, but also not entirely sure about why she was bringing them up right now.

"Oath-breakers..." Hari muttered through gritted teeth. "Oath-breakers and cowards and _anyone at all_."

The girl looked at him for a long moment, before giving him a bitter smile. "Harry, we're killing ourselves."

Hari stared up at her, a kind of confused despair on his face, slowly shifting into horrified understanding. "You-... You really think-...?"

"There have been Dark Lords for hundreds of years, growing worse every time." She shook her head. "Sometimes it's purebloods, sometimes it's muggleborn, sometimes it's neither. They're just a symptom, yes. But they're a symptom to an ill that _we can't remove_."

Hari continued to stare at her for a moment, before something like resolve appeared in his eyes, even if his mouth still slurred some of the words. "People will die. They won't stop. Ever."

The girl smiled that bitter smile again. "And neither will we."

Kakashi frowned a little as Hari motioned him to help him sit up properly, but he helped him nonetheless. He didn't really know what was going on, but he had an inkling that it was more important than the boy's immediate comfort.

Sakura seemed to have about as much of an idea as to what was going on as Kakashi himself did, and the boys were both too focused on making sure that the headmaster didn't do anything stupid to pay them more than the briefest of attention.

This show was entirely between the girl and Hari.

"A mirror." Hari demanded with rasping breath, and Sakura helpfully provided one.

Kakashi wondered when exactly his student had had the time to actually figure out how to carry one of those around in the field, but maybe she'd talked to some of the more experienced kunoichi before leaving. Or maybe it was just one of those 'tough' mirrors that could survive a bit of rough handling.

...- It wasn't Hari being reflected in the glass.

Green eyes, yes. Male, yes. But it was a man, a man without a face. The face more broken glass than flesh, even as the bright green eyes stared out from it.

"The name Harry James Potter, I give to you." A deep shuddering breath. "Magic, flesh, or law. All that belongs to it, you may claim."

And then every single floating candle in the hall went out, frost spreading with visible speed across the stained-glass windows as the temperature dropped to something Kakashi would've been expecting on a glacier rather than indoors.

A figure of frost and mist and chilling cruelty stood among the shadows of the Great Hall. Its hungry grin revealing teeth like icicles in a blizzard.

The apparition lunged forward.

"I am Spring!" Hari shouted in its face, voice cracking under the strain.

A hateful cry of impotent fury. A demand for submission that didn't need words to phrase it.

"I am Spring!" Hari shouted at it again, into the icicle-teeth that were snapping threateningly inches from his own face. "You have no claim on _me_!"

A howl of rage, and then the apparition lashed out with its long claws, slicing Hari across the face before Kakashi could even think to try to move between them. And then it was gone.

Leaving Hari to collapse back into Kakashi's arms, blood sluggishly pouring down from the thin cut across his forehead, to go along with all of the blood he'd already lost to disintegrating his own arm.

"What-... What have you done...?" A whisper from the dying old man.

"Harry James Potter was born in Britain, and is written into the records of Hogwarts, the Ministry of Magic and Gringotts, all." The girl turned to Sakura, a small smile spreading across her lips. "But that's not your brother's name, is it?"

Sakura met her eyes, and smiled the first happy smile Kakashi had seen on her face for months. "No, it isn't."

Kakashi tried to wrap his head around exactly what the two girls were talking about and came up with the vague conclusion that the fae had been unable to properly interact with this world for some reason. That's why the brown-haired girl wanted him to invite winter, though Kakashi was a bit lost on exactly why that would be an even remotely good idea.

As for Hari's actual way of doing so... It seemed to entirely consist of him simply giving up the name he'd been born under to the fae, allowing them to return to this world that 'Harry James Potter' belonged to. After all, a citizenship was very much a possession to own.

Though, Kakashi couldn't help but wonder if it would've worked out nearly as well if Haruno Hari's name hadn't literally been 'of Spring'.

XXX

 **Epilogue**

XXX

Hari traded glances with Sasuke as Sakura went off to greet Ino.

Ino who hadn't even glanced at Sasuke once, and who was looking a little bit weak in the knees about his sister's bare arms. And Sakura herself who'd instantly zeroed in on Ino in the crowd, and didn't seem to think anything at all of the fact that Ino had practically melted into her hug.

The girl who was supposed to be both her best friend and 'her rival for Sasuke's affection'. The same Sasuke that she only ever paid serious attention to when Ino was glancing his way.

Sweet merciful kami, but Hari's sister was literally denser than lead.

Shikamaru was apparently of a similar thought, because he was making a face that clearly said that he wanted to be anywhere else except in the vague neighborhood of their reunion. He looked like he was already developing a headache.

It was nice to be back.

He'd gone through enough food-rations from Kakashi that everyone had been walking on eggshells about exactly how he'd been surviving 'without food' for so long. Hari was pretty sure that it had something to do with the worlds being enough out of alignment that you could fudge physics if you refused something hard enough, but even Naruto thought that that sounded more stupid than awesome, so it was probably not entirely true.

So, not being hungry was nice. And not being kept awake from the hunger-pangs was nice too.

He supposed that he might miss Hermione and Ron a little bit, at some point. They'd been good friends, in their own ways. But nowhere near enough that he'd consider visiting them or inviting them to Konoha. Their paths had diverged, and forcing a meeting once more would only bring needless pain.

No, Konoha was Hari's home. Even if having only a single arm made his chosen career something of a moot point.

An experienced shinobi might be able to function with only a single arm, but a genin only just starting out? Their work was dangerous enough as it was, anything that made it harder than that was basically a death-sentence.

Then again, he _had_ managed to replicate a mostly-working explosive-note from a brief memory, without any aid, and with inferior materials. An admission which had caused Kakashi to make some vague noises about how research-and-development were always happy to have anyone capable of writing seals.

As long as it didn't include blowing up his remaining limbs, Hari was more than willing to give it a try.

Rewriting reality with a piece of paper and some ink? It sounded kind of fun.

XXX

Team 7 had disappeared at a rather inopportune time.

Ignoring the fact that Kakashi would've likely nominated them for the Chunin Exam just to convince his students that he wasn't holding them back from advancing – even though he would've, had the exams taken place anywhere other than Konoha, because Team 7 was something of a political powder-keg and it was best not to tempt fate. A nomination which would've been a perfectly reasonable thing for him to give, but which would've undoubtedly have resulted in an even bigger mess with Orochimaru's infiltration.

As it was, Hiruzen's old student spent a lot of his time running around trying to track down a genin-team that hadn't even been in Konoha for a month before he made his move – and wouldn't return for a substantial amount of months afterwards. A fault in his plans which Hiruzen had happily pointed out to him during his invasion.

Sure, Suna's jinchuuriki tied up a lot of good ninja who could've otherwise helped keep the casualties down, but otherwise it'd been a massive failure all around from his old student.

He'd wasted his time, and grown frustrated enough with it that upon being reminded of it he'd lost his temper.

Orochimaru was a terrifying man in the best of moods, but he'd always been somewhat mercurial in behavior, for all that Hiruzen's other students were more famous for being fickle.

He hadn't managed to stop Orochimaru from running off again. Hadn't even really managed to hurt him permanently, and had nearly completely lost a leg just from driving him off. He really was getting too old.

But there was a distinct lack of proper candidates for the Hat, and if Hiruzen made any noise about retirement before such a candidate could be found, Danzo would swoop in to relieve him of duty and declare him unfit to rule. Which would be ridiculous because they were _the same age_ , not that Danzo had ever let something like that stop him from complaining previously.

So whilst Team 7 not being involved in the Chunin Exams was perhaps a bit of a blessing in hindsight, they really had been running low on personnel in the aftermath. Three genin more or less would've easily slipped under the radar, but Kakashi would've been a godsend.

Still, though they'd clearly been delayed, the fact of the matter was that they had returned. They'd even succeeded in their mission of bringing back Haruno Hari to Konoha. Crippled though he'd been.

The tale they brought with them of it however, made Hiruzen somewhat worried about the future.

Certainly, there hadn't been any reports of people disappearing out of their homes, or much of anything else that their resident experts on all things fae claimed them willing and capable of doing.

But Hiruzen hadn't spent more than half of his life as Hokage without learning to pay attention to things changing. And something was definitely changing, somewhere. He just hadn't managed to figure out where or what, yet.

He did however know that of everyone who'd dealt with fae, upon hearing Hari's final deal with the Winter Court, they'd only been able to find a single loophole. A loophole that worried him rather significantly.

Once upon a time, the Winter Court had promised one Harry James Potter safe passage to Konoha. Not admission, not anything else. But a safe passage to Konoha's gates nonetheless.

And everything Harry James Potter owned belonged to the fae now.

XXX

The howls were growing closer, always closer.

It didn't matter how far he tried to move through the trees or the ground. It didn't matter if he hid, it didn't matter if he disguised himself. They found him. Always.

The plans with Tobi were in ruins. The plans with Pein were in ruins. The plans with Madara were in ruins. The plans for Kaguya's return were _all in ruins_.

The White Zetsu were gone. Hunted down to the last, no matter how expertly they hid. It was only him left now. The single Black Zetsu, fleeing from an enemy that'd arrived from nowhere and who wanted nothing other than the hunt.

A few more missing-nin than previously had been dying. That'd been their only clue. The pattern had been inconsistent. Nothing had connected them to each other, and being a missing-nin was a dangerous lifestyle regardless. It shouldn't have been anything to worry over.

And then Akatsuki had been gutted. Its members there one day and gone the next. Tobi had been supposed to investigate it, except he'd disappeared too, and then the White Zetsu began to die in an endless river of gore. Hunted to the last.

Chakra finally spent, the Black Zetsu turned to face his hunters.

Strange creatures, humanoid but as far removed from humans as Zetsu himself had been. Probably even further than that, from the way their touch warped the chakra around them.

"Why?" He hissed at them.

A head full of antlers tilted in consideration, hard eyes staring down at him from the other side of a spear. "It's just our nature."

And then the spear stabbed forward, and the Black Zetsu knew no more.

XXX

Madam Pomfrey arrived too late to save Dumbledore, rushing onto the scene barely in time to watch him breathe his last few breaths.

It was the first time Hermione saw somebody die.

She didn't regret it.

Albus Dumbledore had pushed forward a lot of laws and changes that were good, but Hermione couldn't quite bring herself to separate that person from the one who'd kidnapped a twelve-year-old from his loving family and then trapped him in what should've been a place for learning. All for the sake of a prophecy and some rotten politics.

And even if Hermione deciding to convince Harry to release the Hunt on their world would probably end up hurting a lot of people, and she wasn't entirely sure if it would really stop the symptoms that'd been plaguing them since before the Statute of Secrecy had ever been thought of. In the end, it was the only option that made any sense as far as Dumbledore's belief of a prophecy was concerned.

That, and it was probably Harry's only chance of returning home without ever being forced to come back to Hogwarts by someone else capable of tracking him down like Dumbledore had. And though Hermione would've probably ended up in deep trouble with a lot of people if there'd been any witnesses to her actions, all witnesses were either dead or away someplace to wherever Harry lived.

After all, Ron and Madam Pomfrey had only arrived to see the light fade from Dumbledore's eyes, and Hari's sister and friends were all long gone by then.

It was a tense summer, waiting, listening, wondering what the next headline of the Daily Prophet would declare. But it was silent. Perhaps because the fae hadn't proven to the world that they'd returned, perhaps because the Daily Prophet simply refused to believe whatever proof had already been presented to them.

Returning for her third year, she found another girl who could see the thestrals pulling the carriages to Hogwarts, along with herself and Ron. A strange and rather bizarre second-year, who'd happily imposed herself on them ever since the train.

Not that Hermione terribly minded, for all that she didn't put all that much faint in the supposed abilities of her necklace made of butterbeer caps. Fae being a real thing or no, Hermione couldn't even remember reading any fairytales about anything like Nargles.

"Oh, did you like the book I borrowed you?" Luna finally asked as they stepped out of the carriage they'd shared.

Hermione blinked, confused for a long moment.

"It was my mother's." Luna smiled, a little bit nostalgic and a little bit bittersweet. "Thank you, by the way. She tried so very hard to fix things again."

And that as how Hermione was finally properly introduced to the single most manipulative best friend she'd ever had.

And her second best friend had been a ninja raised by fae.

XXX

 **A/n: For a perfect example of a trophic cascade, there's a very good video about the wolves of Yellowstone floating around on youtube.**

 **And yeah, Luna is the grand manipulator in this fic. Hopefully it didn't come completely from out of left field (though a girl with blonde hair is mentioned to be wandering around the books on fairytales, earlier).**

 **As for her being in the right? In this world, she is. Her actions help eliminate both Voldemort (remember the slice across the scar?) and future Dark Lords. After all, they tend to operate with methods that the fae would be looking for in prime hunting-material, making it very unattractive for Dark Lords to be Dark Lords.**

 **Yes, a bunch of innocent lives will likely end over the course of a great many years, but in comparison to the lives that would equally as truthfully have been lost when the next Dark Lord rose to power? It's a ruthless kind of logic.**

 **As for the Hunt's mention of it being their nature? It's from a story about a scorpion that I'm certain a great many of you have heard of before.**

 **(And yeah no, get fucked Zetsu.)**


End file.
